Do I need a new Graphics Card

deceit

I am in Germany at the moment and decide while was in a shop to pick up some core i7 kit as was just as cheap as hardwareversand is. 920 DO, 6 gb ocz platinum ram and an asus p6t. Just wondering should I get a new graphics card or just use my 4870 from my other pc I have. Would a 4870 512mb be a big bottleneck for the i7 in terms of gaming performance? If it wouldnt be a huge bottle neck would just keep the money for college instead.

Solitaire

Depends on resolution. You should get away with the HD4870 if playing at 1650*1080, but if you have a fancy 1080p+ monitor you might want to think about buying and OCing a HD4890 for the extra oomph. 900MHz+ >>> 750MHz! Even a HD4870 1GB would give improvements over a stock HD4870 at 1080p (512MB cards start to struggle past 1080p due to framebuffer limitations) but not enough to warrant buying one given a HD4890 is much more suitable (owing to the extra GPU power) and doesn't cost that much more in Germany - often under €160 now.

deceit

I have a 28" hanns-G 1920*1200 monitor that I use for gaming so then think will upgrade. I heard the gtx 275 is a bit better than the 4980 1gb and can get it here for 170. Would this be a better card?

kfish2oo2

If I were you I'd just buy a second HD4870 and Crossfire them. Crossfire performance nowadays is pretty awesome, and HD4870's are fairly cheap considering.

Solitaire

Not advisable unless deceit already has a good-brand 750W PSU to throw into the mix, as the cards will eat up over 260W, not including extra power needed for the CrossFire bridge itself! And although performance would still be a bit higher than a HD4890 or GTX275 it wouldn't be that much higher with high game settings as each HD4870 would be limited to 512MB framebuffers each which will hobble each card past 1650*1080. There's a reason why HD4870X2 has 2GB of GDDR5...

And I wouldn't go with GTX275 unless you can't find any HD4890's under €170 or you only play UT3 etc. (i.e. TWIWMTBP sh!te with no ATi drivers). The gap in performance is almost non-existant and a quick tweak to the HD4890's speeds in CCC quickly reverses the trend.

deceit

I have a decent 780watt psu. If I get a second card I would leave the 4870 in my other machine as it is a pretty decent machine also (e8400 eo, 4gb ddr3 and p5e3 pro) so crossfire would be out of the equation. Would either be a 4890 or gtx275. With the 4890's overclocking better would maybe get one of them then.

Solitaire

780W? What brand and model? Sounds a wee bit fishy...

I've seen HD4890s dropped down to a little over €150 in places, HWVS for one. You should be able to pick up a deal somewhere over there for at least €20-25 less than a GTX275.

Your other machine sounds pretty decent as-is

deceit

http://computers.pricegrabber.com/power-supplies/OCZ-Technology-ModXStream-780-Watts-Supply/m47009399.html This is the psu. It would come out of the other machine and would stick a 600watt xilence psu in that.

Solitaire

Nope, I'd never dream of running CrossFire'd HD4870s on that PoS. There's a reason why OCZ have a policy of not handing out FSP/Sirtec sample units out to reviewers that have a load tester, and that's because they're utter [CENSORED]. You'd be lucky to get 500W out of that thing without slowly cooking your connected hardware :mad:

deceit

Oh didnt know Ö(, means I should really look for a new psu rather than a graphics card Ö(.

Solitaire

Not really, its okay so long as you don't go CrossFire. i7-920 + HD4890 = 250W before you figure in OC. Add the rest of the system and so long as you're not OCing with LN2 or something equally crazy you'll fall well short of the danger threshold. FSPs only get nasty once you try to thrash out more than 500W out of them.

deceit

I will be looking just to overclock the i7 with a decent cooler as read in alot of places the DO stepping can make about 4ghz without increasing volts, want to try out watercooling on the e8400. I had an e6400 in the pc up until now and bought the e8400 a few days before the core i7. Ive sent the p6t home as would be too big to carry on a plane and wouldnt trust putting it in a suit case otherwise would have shown a pic also.
Just so it doesnt seem fishy anymore:

Solitaire

Yummy!

Seen a lot of that low-latency OCZ DDR3 lately; demand is crazy due to the ludicrously low prices for the stuff. OCZ really manage to nab the cream of the DDR3 IC crop this time Wonder who the OEM for those ICs is...

deceit

No idea who the oem for them is. Is there anyway i can find out?

Solitaire

If they manage 7-7-7-20@1.65V that's all you should care about

Unlike PSUs, exploding RAM is fairly rare thankfully Mind you, there was that incident with Crucial a couple of years ago... In any case I haven't heard of any mass-defective batches of DDR3 so you should be well in the clear